1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to color copiers, and particularly to wet color hardcopy apparatuses to produce color hard copies using blue, green, and red color signals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Variouss types of color copiers for making color hard copies have recently been developed.
A typical color hardcopy process operates on a principal similar to color photography and involves the injection of inks in three primary colors, blue, green, and red (B, G, and R). However, all these processes require large, complex, and expensive apparatuses so that they are economically disadvantageous.
To eliminate these disadvantages, a simpler process was invented which uses a three-layer paper composed of a base layer 1, an ink layer 2, and an opaque layer surface 3 as shown in FIG. 1. The ink layer 2 contains ink materials (color matter) in three primary colors, blue, green and red, arrayed in stripes. A needle 4 perforates the surface layer 3 of the paper according to color signals and causes the color inks to ooze out of the surface layer 3 in order to provide a color picture on the paper.
This process suffers from a number of disadvantages. It requires a special type of paper having a three-layer structure, whhich is so expensive, thick, and heavy as to be economically unsuitable for mass consumption and inconvenient in handling. Furthermore, the ink layer of the paper and the perforations formed in the surface layer 3 still remain after completion of copying and may cause blurring of the ink under accidental finger pressure. This would degrade the quality of the cover copy. Also, the production of the number of copies from an original picture requires the entry of color signals for every copy. This requires a long time and imposes a load on the electric circuit.